Drones, Rand and Your Liberty

This is a commentary I wrote at the height of the Rand Paul filibuster fallout.  I really felt it was a good piece and could add to the debate, so I submitted it for publication to my favorite outlet.  They unfortunately took so long to reject it that it became somewhat irrelevant.  I decided to put it up here finally because I am really kind of proud of the piece, and I hope you enjoy.

There has been some criticism of Senator Rand Paul in the past, some of it deserved, but his recent filibuster over the question of the use of drones by the administration has earned him a great deal of praise.  Conversely, we have also seen an incredibly disturbing pushback against the whole episode, which has created some very strange bedfellows.  From John McCain, lambasting the idea of stirring up the kiddies to Lawrence O’Donnell, spewing invectives like “psychopath” on a supposed news show, we saw people become very critical of the idea of demanding this government answer a simple question: Do you believe you have the authority to kill an American citizen on American soil without the due process protections guaranteed by the Constitution  you swore to uphold?  A very simple question, one the administration would not answer clearly until after the filibuster.  Their initial response was filled with rather asinine non sequiturs like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, as if someone would not notice the difference between an active and on-going commission of violence versus what Paul was asking after. The critics of Senator Paul have come from all sides and all angles, some painting the episode as tin foil hat conspiracy to un-American naiveté about how the grown-ups need the latitude to keep us ‘safe’ from all the scary things out there.  Neither of these is true, and trying to stifle debate over an incredibly important constitutional issue because you don’t want to be a hypocritical War Hawk by not supporting Obama’s version of the drone program or are aiming to be an immensely hypocritical Democrat defending ‘your guy’ while they are in office is ridiculous.

One of the problems in this episode was Paul’s terrible hypothetical that he brought up, the one that is constantly repeated about someone’s “café-experience” over political dissent.  This unfortunate, sound-bite worthy bit, gives the critics the ability to minimize the argument by easily lampooning the hypothetical.  Paul needed a much better example of what he was talking about.  Many people, even among the critics, agree that the drone program needs more oversight.  There is a great deal of talk about the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), and what that allows the president to do, and so many people seem to be in the very unfortunate company of Bush torture memo author, John Yoo, that when we used the word “War”, we essentially made the president into an all powerful emperor who can do literally anything anywhere in the world, like targeting an American citizen for death without due process.  If we want to delve deeper into the question of drones, both domestically and on foreign soil, to see if our Constitution  actually provides us with any protection of our lives and liberty, we need to frame the questions better.  Here is a domestic hypothetical that Paul could have framed and demanded an answer to:

We have Natural Born American Citizen “X”.  Mr. X is abroad and has been identified by our Executive Branch officials as a member of al Qaeda.  We do not know why or how he was identified as such, for that is secret.  This individual has been classified as worthy of targeted killing by drone because he poses an “imminent threat” to American National Security.  We do not know who or by what metric, using what evidence, this determination has been made, for that too is secret.  No evidence has been submitted to any court, not even a secret FISA court, and no indictment has been handed down by a Grand Jury.  This man’s life is forfeit because the Executive Branch has convinced itself that he is guilty of a crime.  Now, intelligence has been gathered that Mr. X is back in the U.S. for some unknown reason. An alert comes through that Mr. X has been spotted in the Arizona desert 10 miles from the Mexican border, traveling south about to leave the country.  There is no one who could be mobilized to capture him before he gets to the border.  There are no Mexican authorities who could intercede on their side of the border.  So, the question is this - does the President’s supposed  authority to kill this man abroad now translate to this scenario?  Mr. X is labeled a imminent threat, he is in the open with minimal collateral damage, there is no real opportunity to capture him, and it is unknown if another opportunity such as this will ever exist again.  Can he shoot?  If the answer to that question is yes, then what is Administration’s definition of due process as guaranteed by the 5th Amendment?  If the answer is no, does the Administration believe it can kill this man in two hours when he crosses over into Mexico?  If we change the conditions of the hypothetical to having Mr. X in the Idaho wilderness about to cross into Canada does anything change?  If in this scenario either Mexico or Canada informed the President that they did not have the ability to capture this individual, but demanded that no drone or missile cross their airspace, what then?  Does the President have the authority to cause an international incident in the pursuit of killing Mr. X?

That is a better scenario than a café, and once again, the question is not “Would you Mr. Obama?” but “Can you Mr. President of the United States?”  No one drawing breath right now would assume John Yoo would not happily endorse killing Mr. X wherever he may be, but what about John McCain?  Given the scenario of some nefarious individual being blasted in his home state, what he would say?  How about Lawrence O’Donnell at that point?  If we framed the issue a little better, would it be psychotic to ask if this Mr. X, condemned by some Star Chamber using secret evidence that can’t be discussed or disseminated, can be summarily executed by the President of the United States?  When and under what conditions may we start asking those questions before we become crackpots?

We also need start discussing this drone program in its international context.  This ridiculous notion that the AUMF allows the President to kill anyone anywhere also needs to be reexamined.  Try it with this other hypothetical when it comes to international drone use:

French national of Algerian descent, Mr. Y, is employed in an aid agency and is working in Yemen.  American Intelligence determines that Mr. Y is actually an al Qaeda operative and the aid agency is a deep cover.  He becomes listed for targeted killing, he is located and a drone is dispatched to eliminate him.  The drone strike misses, and Mr. Y flees back to France, vociferously claiming his innocence and demanding that his government protect him from an undeserved American death sentence.  There is popular outcry, a media firestorm, and immense pressure is placed on the French government until the point they grant Mr. Y asylum; he will not be extradited to the United States unless and until all their evidence against him is made public.  Given his cause célèbre, Mr. Y isn’t even detained.  Now, Mr. President, do you have the authority to violate NATO ally France’s sovereignty and launch a drone strike against Mr. Y if a situation presents itself in which there is minimal collateral damage?  Does the AUMF provide you with the ability to engage in overt acts of war against other nations because they might exercise the sovereign right to protect their citizens from execution and their territory from incursion?

Where would McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham stand on this hypothetical?  Does new CIA Director John Brennan believe that we could kill this individual under these circumstances?  Once again this is not a question of “Would you?” but “Could you?”  Killing scary Muslim folk in far off, underdeveloped countries doesn't seem to phase the American people, but what about the rest of the world?  We do not discuss the collateral damage or whether killing innocent civilians, including children, is making more enemies (and far more dedicated enemies at that) than we are killing in these strikes.  What Senator Paul was asking is what do we conceive as the limits on our government’s ability to kill its own citizens and, by extension, to have a conversation about our government’s continued policy of killing quite a few people all over the world with absolutely no oversight, all in furtherance of the ubiquitous “War on Terror” which makes every square inch of the planet a war zone.  Not trusting in your government’s ability to brand someone an enemy of the state and kill them without trial or publicly presenting the evidence does not make you a paranoid freak-show getting your bunker ready for Mad Max-esque end times.  Members of the media who mocked or belittled the idea of questioning the administration’s seeming contempt for due process (not only the corner stone of our legal system, but the oldest concept of the common law) show themselves to either be willfully ignorant or incestuously entwined with the administration and their talking points.  Those on the right, especially sitting legislators, upset over their cherished War Hawk notion of ‘kill them all anywhere, anytime’ policy being questioned need to go back and read the Constitution  and its very real and necessary limits on the power of the government.  Those on the left who do not criticize the policy because “their guy” is in power need to take a real long look in the mirror.  They decry the hyper-partisanship of our government and the inability to get anything done, yet criticize Senator Paul because he is from the other side, doing what these clowns should have been doing all along, speaking truth to power.  If you stand against the idea of the death penalty in all criminal cases because the State might execute an innocent man, and you don’t stand up and question the use of drones, either foreign or domestic, to kill someone by executive fiat, because you happen to trust the guy holding the office today, then your entire world view is a logical disconnect, an ideological inconsistency that is really indefensible.  To shout down those, who, poorly worded or not, would question the scope, depth and breadth of the President of the United States’ power to kill his own citizens, does a disservice to the Constitution  and all those who in the past have fought for our rights.  Not questioning the powers-that-be about the limits of their power led to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques”, something most people would have thought impossible prior to 9/11.  In light of that do we really see the questioning of a President’s (regardless of political party) idea of when, where, why and how he can kill another citizen as being unreasonable?  Questioning authority is not, and should not, be a partisan issue and not exercising that right today only makes it harder to push back against over reach tomorrow.  Those legislators, pundits and journalists who would blithely or sarcastically minimize or trivialize the idea that we as citizens should never defer or trust in government’s ability to simply always make the right call in these situations, need to ask the few remaining Japanese internment camp victims how much trust we as a people should place in our government to protect our lives and liberty in a time of war.

Glenn the 'Libertarian'

Returning to the fray after somewhat of a long hiatus I think it is only proper to take up Glenn Beck and his recent ‘conversion’ to being somewhat of a libertarian, in his own words.  Mr. Beck seems to be very upset that there are people out there who might be just slightly hesitant to embrace him at this early stage of his conversion.  He was particularly upset with people such as Alexander McCobin of the Students for Liberty who said, and restated wonderfully here, that this is not a question of an ideological purity test, that some ‘small tent’ libertarians want to exclude him because of issue X or Y.  The issue here is that Beck must be the one, for more than a week or so, to show that he has actually changed through his rhetoric and actions.  It is fine to stand up and say “hey guys I was wrong, I’m part of the team now” and IF he starts backing words with action then people will start to judge and accept him on that basis, but he can’t jump up and expect, after a decade of very public resistance to most of the efforts of the liberty movement, to be crowned the titular head or spokesman of the movement coming right out of the gates (which quite honestly seems to be what he is so upset about).  Beck needs to start somewhat at the back of the line and do a little put up or shut up.  Now, he start of by having a discussion with some libertarians on his show, and right off the bat he shows the problem that many people have with this conversion.

In this video they start off with the topic of drugs, and the idea of legalizing drugs.  Beck instantly shows, and admits to, his ‘conservative’ bias in that he can’t wrap his mind around this idea of legal heroin, and the lost generation of people who would clog up the welfare state with their addiction.  Now the response dealing with the simultaneous dismantling of the welfare state is fine, but really the whole issue of the Drug War shows the gulf between libertarians and conservatives.  The issue, at least for me, is not about the drugs and the affect they might have, it is about government policy, and this is why Beck is not going to be openly embraced by many libertarians, until such time as HE starts to change.  When it comes to discussing legalizing drugs I always start with Prohibition.  Almost everyone can understand that Prohibition was a terrible policy that had terrible consequences.  Almost everyone knows who Al Capone was, and they understand that the only reason they know who this penny-ante thug was is because Prohibition made him a multi-millionaire and a cultural folk hero.  Almost everyone knows or has seen someone who is wasting their life away with alcohol, but even ardent teetotalers would be hard pressed to say “we need a law…” because everyone comprehends and understands the disaster that was Prohibition, but if you ask them to apply that same logical conclusion to the Drug War you all of the sudden have this massive cognitive dissonance occur.  It almost automatically comes down to drugs are bad and government needs to outlaw them.   No recognition that they have been fed decades of scary propaganda that lumps all drugs and drug users as equally evil and immoral.  They don’t see the interconnected nature of it all, the building blocks of the system.  Once upon a time it was considered necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to provide our limited government with the power to outlaw something like alcohol.  Not so now, it is all wonderfully Progressive ‘commerce clause’ and ‘necessary and proper’ actions that lock up millions of people and directly cause the deaths of thousand of others.  They don’t see the Black Market nature of the drug business being the impetus behind the entire cycle of gun violence, the erosion of constitutional protections, border and immigration issues, the lack of economic opportunity and mobility in the inner cities and a host of other problems.  They simply see drugs as being bad and why can’t some politician just do something to protect the poor little children from the scourge of drugs.

Libertarians loath the idea of the state interfering in your personal autonomy, of giving power to government to intercede on your behalf, to save you from yourself as it were.  Many conservatives can find all manner of reasons to use the power of the state to MAKE you behave in a way they believe to be proper.  Santorum, Bachmann and a whole host of conservatives, many of whom Beck has openly supported in the past, would gladly use the Federal government to force individuals to behave in a manner they believed proper.  This is the battle cry of the Progressive, that government can and should be a direct vehicle for changing people’s practices, actions and attitudes that are considered to be unhealthy or improper for the collective of the State.  Beck has railed against these ideas when they are coming out of the Left, but what about the Right?  You can say that forcing someone to buy health insurance they don’t want is an improper extension of power by the Federal government over individual autonomy, and I would agree.  You can say that regulating what, where, when and how much anyone eats is beyond the scope and power of our limited constitutional government and I would agree.  You can declare that the overreach of government into every sector of life and the economy is an abomination never intended by our Founders, and I would and do support you.  You can not however turn around, point at some wastoid in the corner who wants to sit around hastening himself to an early grave by mainlining crank and say “the Federal government needs to find the authority to outlaw that activity and ensure it can’t happen by investing billions of dollars on interdiction, eradication, imprisonment every year until the problem is eliminated!”  It is a logical disconnect, and while I am a big tent type who does not advocate ideological purity, I will certainly point out ideological inconsistency and ask questions.

So let’s start in that vein, which I believe to be Mr. McCobin’s point about Beck being the one who needs to move and not vice versa.  Can Beck explain how the Drug War or drug prohibition fits into his idea of how, where, when and in what fashion the (limited) Federal government should be acting?  Can he defend it without there being a glaring ideological inconsistency in that response, say when compared to something like a ‘Junk Food Tax’ which he has lambasted in the past?  Some Liberal Progressive busy body can make just as compelling case about a man’s ‘sugar induced diabetes imposing societal costs that need to be curtailed’ as a moralizing Conservative’s claim that individual consumption of Black Tar Heroin should be demonized and outlawed by the Feds, much in the same way as a whole host of people a century gone insisted I shouldn’t be enjoying as much Single Malt Whisky as I do.  All are positions that are interrelated mainly in the fact that none of them are ‘libertarian.’  We don’t have union cards, and you can call yourself the Emperor of Siam for all I care, but if you want to embrace, advocate and expand the liberty movement then please do so through your actions.  Show yourself to be the changed man, open to dialogue, more inclusive and receptive to ideas outside of the generally conservative, and then we will see what develops.

Secession Talk, Well That Should Help the Cause

This is once again an expanded idea from a comment I was trying to formulate on a secessionist Facebook posting.  The problem was that every time I turned around there was another, and another. All of the sudden there was infighting and screaming matches over how ‘true libertarians would never insult secession’ and on and on.  This road off the rails very quickly, and it is unfortunate that we couldn't just step back and take a breath here.

The problem as I have seen it is this: some of us are not at all concerned about the moral, legal, philosophical or historical discussion of the concept of secession.  We know them, understand them, and even agree with some of them, if not in the practical sense at least the esoteric.  But many of us are concerned that when we have such a great opportunity, and so many outlets, to talk with people about the notion of liberty and limited government principles being solutions to the actual, real world problems they are facing in their lives, and we could be one the cusp of convincing many of them to dump the dichotomy and silliness of our present political system, and what do we see? So many of our ranks jump up and defend the concept of these secessionist petitions. You could see where this story was going before it hit the big media, and this is where liberty movement people should have paused and reflected.

The day after an election you see these petitions jump up from places like Texas.  Texas, that never sweat one single overstep of W and the GOP while they put in place a myriad of ridiculous Big Government encroachments that pulled this country right to the edge of fiscal oblivion and Orwellian existence. Texas that came out big for W’s reelection and just as big for Romney this time around.  Never a thought of limited, constitutional government prior to this.  This is the state that is famous for limited government initiatives like the fight to keep being a homosexual in your personal, private life a crime - but now supposedly they have their jimmies rustled about liberty and a free society?  They are upset they lost an election in which they were able to freely participate.  They then want to violate the democratic bargain and take their ball and go home.  What are their long endured list of grievances?  Has the federal government encroached on personal liberty becoming a very dangerous entity?  Absolutely.  But given the absolute fact that there was barely a bit of difference between Romney and Obama on any substantive bit of policy or spending would all of these people have rushed to file this petition regardless of who won the election?  Would we have seen this big spontaneous movement for a return to constitutional principles with a Romney win?  OF COURSE NOT!  This was not a principled statement of the long and unbearable suffering of a people laboring under a despotic regime, this was a knee jerk reaction to losing ONE election they thought they should have won, which is exactly what the Confederacy was based on and why it lacked any real legitimacy.  As the latter part of the Declaration states, and no one is quoting: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…While you could easily make the case that those causes do exist, this was not one of those instances, this was theater plain and simple, a circle-jerk of disaffected mooks.

The liberty movement did not need to be involved in any of this, could have said: ‘silly neo-cons, go cry in your cheerios’ and it would have been fine. You don't get involved in a toddler's temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store, even if you understand and sympathize with the toddler’s grievance, and this little fit is the same thing.  Yet here we are once again.  There are large swaths of people who could support the liberty movement and maybe self identify as somewhat libertarian if not for the fact they have been told that it a crazy ideology, not fit for a place at the table to discuss the big problems.  And what can those potentials, those fence-sitters see from the outside looking in?  Full throated defenses of secession and infighting over ideological purity. I don’t want to ever play the ‘no-true-Scotsman’ game, I want to be inclusive.  We can talk about the concept of secession, just like any free association concept, but the whole ‘FUCK YEAH!’ defense of these petitions hurts the team, I believe.  It is a similar situation to what many of us say about An-Cap. However sacrilegious it is to say to some, An-Cap shouldn't be the public face or the first thing people meet on their intro to libertarian thought. If they get there on their own as a matter of their personal philosophical development, or take some other road like Objectivism or more Classical Liberal, then so be it, it can all fit under a big tent of maximizing personal liberty while minimizing the state.  We must always remember that it has taken decades to get things this screwed up, and it will be incremental steps wrought through compromise that is going to move the ball forward.  Knocking on doors saying ‘can I talk to you about the liberty movement and our first and foremost advocacy of secession?’ is not going to get many converts. These are the reasons we can’t have nice things, and we should be a little more leery of when, where and why we jump into a philosophical argument.

How Did It Feel to Throw Away Your Vote?

Of course by that title I mean how do all the liberty movement people feel about being conned into flushing their vote away on Romney?  This post is inspired by a comment I left on a Jeremy Kolassa piece over at United Liberty (if you are not reading him, by the way, you should be).  Jeremy was making the pre-election case that if the Libertarian Party, with a candidate as good as Gary Johnson, couldn't crack a million votes he was just plain done advocating or supporting them.  Well they did crack the threshold, giving their best showing ever in raw vote total, but there was so much more that could have happened here.  The real tragedy, and problem in my opinion, is that so many people who would have voted for Johnson, if for no other reason than to make a statement of their displeasure with the system, bought into the fiction that this was THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF YOUR LIFETIME AND IF YOU DO NOT SUPPORT ROMNEY THE REPUBLIC WILL FALL horseshit that was flowing hard and heavy from many quarters.  It was unfortunately flowing very heavy from many people in the liberty movement, supposed standard bearers for principles of limited government and freedom.  They said that we had to play nice-nice with the GOP, that if we split the vote and cost the election they would never let us in the tent.  They advocated fusionism and long ball, that whole ‘what happens to Rand in 2016?’ shtick, as if that is the only possible or desirable outcome for the liberty enthusiast.  They said an awful lot about this, and I would say (and said at the time) they were wrong, and that they actually did a disservice to the movement.  I would say they actually suppressed the Johnson vote, something that could have panned out to well over 5% of the electorate and maybe started to build momentum for the future.

As an example let’s start with my home state of New Hampshire.  Romney made a real push for the state, purple on any given day, with a lot of big money outreach (commercials, phone calls etc).  When you look at the actual outcome of the election, it wasn't even competitive, and the Johnson vote had absolutely no impact on the outcome.  What also had no impact were any ‘potential’ votes Johnson might have gotten that ended up being wasted on Romney.  When you look at the numbers:

Obama: 368,259 - 52.6%
Romney: 327, 870 - 46.4%
Johnson: 8,319 - 1.2%

Pretty pitiful, huh?  1.2% of the vote for Johnson, and Romney lost by more than 40,000 votes.  Yet what about ‘potential’ votes?  Take a look at our other races:

Governor                                        1st Congressional District                    2nd Congressional District

Hassan (D) 378,258 (54.6%)           Shea-Porter (D) 171,356 (49.7%)        Kuster (D) 168,954 (50.2%)

Lamontagne (R) 294,477 (42.5%)    Guinta (R) 158,482 (46%)                   Bass (R) 151,858 (45.1%)

Babiarz (L) 19,868 (2.9%)               Kelly (L) 14,968 (4.3%)                      Macia (L) 15,779 (4.7%)

So, if you are an arrogant and pretentious GOP blowhard who believes all Libertarian votes should go to the Republicans you could make the case that Guinta lost his job thanks to the LP.  More important than that piece of fiction though is the Governor’s race.  This race was not even close, thanks in no large part to terrible, terrible candidates, but look at the raw numbers:  11,000 more people filled an oval for Babiarz in the governor’s slot (less than a ½” right below Johnson who was the first name on the ballot) than actually voted for Johnson.  If you combine the two congressional races, again leaving aside whatever internal dynamics might be involved in NH, over 30,000 voted LP in those races, holding over 4% of the vote, while Johnson carries only 1.2%.  Why?  How many of those people found themselves believing the silly idea that there was a dime’s bit of difference between Romney and Obama, or that they were saving the nation from the evils of Progressive European style socialism?  How did people find themselves vested in the notion that their vote for Romney was one to save the country, yet decided that in all the races down ticket involving craptastic generic R and D candidates they would buck the system and cast a vote on principle?  What impact did all the media bloviating,  including that of our supposed leaders and intellectuals in the liberty movement, have on these people decision?  What might have been the outcome had all those advocating betraying principle to vote, once again, for the ‘lesser-of-two-evils’, had said instead ‘don’t fall for it again, make a real statement by supporting the person who’s beliefs you actually agree with’?  You could reasonably say Johnson would have passed at least 4% here, and maybe much, much more had the message been the latter.  But this is just New Hampshire, what about the rest of the country?

There are a few other governor’s races, one’s that draw a statewide crowd, that show similar trends.  1% for Johnson while the other race garners 2 to 4%:

      North Carolina                                       Missouri                                     Indiana
McCrory (R) 2,447,988 (54.7%)          Nixon (D) 1,485,147 (54.7%)        Pence (R) 1,268,076 (49.6%)

Dalton (D) 1,931,750 (43.2%)            Spence (R) 1,157,475 (42.6%)      Gregg (D) 1,187,508 (46.4%)

Howe (L) 95,154 (2.1%)                    Higgins (L) 73,196 (2.7%)             Boneham (L) 101,326 (4.0%)

Johnson @ 44,798 (1%)                   Johnson 43,029 (1.6%)               Johnson 49,838 (1.9%)

Now, in all of these cases the LP vote did not affect the outcome of the governor’s race, and had all the people who voted LP down ticket voted Johnson it would also not have changed the outcome of that state’s presidential race.  Given the nature of the absolute creaming the GOP took nationwide the complete flipping of the LP vote behind Johnson wouldn't have changed the electoral map at all.  Romney and the republicans lost this race all on their own, and there was nothing they could have done about it, except maybe running a coherent campaign.  The impact of a 4 or 5% Johnson vote though would have paid much higher dividends.  The LP being designated as a ‘major party’ would have avoided future ballot and debate access issues that played out this year.  Imagine what would have happened with Johnson on the debate stage, challenging the stupid little narratives that Obama and Romney brought to the stage.  How well could the cause of limited government and liberty been advanced, say had, oh I don’t know, an actual advocate of those principles had been talking about them for the American people to hear?  Wouldn't that have been nice?  Instead we had people in our own tent openly and often scoff at the notion, demeaning the notion that we should be supporting and voting FOR something.  Asking us to be place holders for some big grand fight in 2016 instead of making a push for real separation did everyone a disservice.

Those who stood with the GOP are on the losing side, and those of us who stood with Johnson can only point to the fact we brought a million votes to the table.  The Ron Paul supporters, many million liberty minded votes we were told, where were they?  What portion of the losing tally were ‘liberty’ voters?  Do you see the problem?  This race was lost months ago, there was no hope of a Romney presidency, and everyone seems to be realizing that now.  Now, in the GOP civil war that everyone says is coming, what possible metrics does the liberty movement bring to the equation.  If the liberty voter, who probably liked Johnson much better than Romney, had voted for him what could we be saying now?  Four, five, six million votes?  If the Paulites had come on en mass, what would that have meant?  As it stands what can anyone say?  When the factional strife comes who will come out on top?  There is a great deal of talk about the direction that the party will take.  There are some saying the GOP has to go more libertarian, while others say they need to go even more conservative.  In an all out brawl who wins, Rand Paul or Rick Santorum?  Is this a turning point for the republicans?  Will they change their ways?  What should the liberty enthusiast be doing?

Personally  do not see it happening, and even if it did the real problem is, and some may disagree, is that the well is poisoned.  What does the GOP stand for?  How easy was it to take the extreme, yet entrenched, elements of the party and make it a winning talking point all over the country?  Take as an example the Scott Brown race in Massachusetts.  Near the end of the campaign you started to see in the commercials state something to the effect of “a vote for Scott Brown might give the radical republicans a majority in the senate”.  Brown was a middle of the road guy if there ever was one, and Elizabeth Warren is a barn burning ideologue, yet who won and why?  The national attention paid to the ramblings of idiots like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock allowed for that set-up, if you could even call it that.  Hold up the ‘rape-baby’ theocratic types, and ask the question - a vote for your local republican puts clowns like that in positions of power, do you really want that?

While people will say look at the inroads, look at the Republican Liberty Caucus in congress, think of the potential; my response is always what happens when the brand is tarnished?  Who gets thrown out with the bathwater.  The Skeptical Libertarian wrote a great piece educating people that it is the libertarians who have been leading the charge on gay marriage.  He is absolutely correct in everything he says, and he uses New Hampshire as an example.  In our state the just terrible Speaker of the House (who had super-majorities in both houses and has essentially run the show without the governor for two years) let the social conservatives off the leash and they tried to implement some of their planks.  The biggest fight was over trying to undo the marriage equality law.  It was stopped by the libertarian leaning republicans and other moderate legislators, most standing on principle and some who held greater than a 3rd grade education and realized this would cost seats to the majority.  These people did good work that day, and nearly to a man they were all swept out of office last week.  They were in the poisoned well.  I have friends who got bounced out of their seats even though they were the ones who stood athwart of the crazy train, receiving no credit from the voters for their action.  Most all of those social conservatives, including the now former speaker, get to keep their seat however.  Place that now on every race for the next four years.  If the democrats have half a brain (which is debatable) then in every race going forward there will be commercials, interviews and debate questions foisted on every GOP candidate demanding they answer questions about abortion, contraception, rape babies, science vs. God’s will and every other thing that can be thrown out there from the direct quotes of social conservative candidates in other races.  This limits any chance you have of talking about the issues of limited government and liberty, the general GOP baggage prevents you from doing it.

The GOP and the Democrats spent well over $2 Billion on securing the presidency.  Does anyone really think they did that because they truly and deeply care about you and I?  Is our message of being free of a state that has so much power over us and our economy that it justifies some groups spending $2 Billion on the top office ever going to resonate with either of those stated groups?  There are GOP thinkers who say to secure future victory they need to be less anti-gay, anti-Mexican, theocratic ‘family-values’ oriented and more libertarian.  Why not just be Libertarian then?  This is why I advocate for not bothering with the GOP, and I would hope that at this point some of our intellectuals and media titans would start doing the same.  If you came out as a Libertarian party candidate you automatically avoid having the social conservative baggage.  You could advocate for the things you believe in from a clean slate, and you could attempt to convince not only independents and registered republicans, but democrats as well.  We could reach out to the TEA Party and see if they truly have the limited government credentials they have claimed for so long.  For those of us who claim to be members and advocates of the liberty movement we need to start asking how important our principles really are.  If it is really about principles and not party or people, then why not advocate and support the people and the party that most closely reflects our principles, for as long as they meet that criteria?  Doesn't that seem more productive then joining in what is going to be, at least for the next few years, a naked and hollow attempt to pander for votes in order to maintain or retain power?

Johnson Understands Drones Can Also Make Enemies

Why am I a libertarian?  It is about freedom.  It is about liberty. I have neither the wisdom nor the right to dictate how you should run your life.  I resist the encroachment and increase of government power not because I am callous, insensitive, indifferent or naive, but because I fear the next step down the road towards totalitarianism when the wrong politician takes the helm with that power.  There are dozens of real issues that will affect this country's future that neither the Democrats or Republicans will never address.  As an exercise try examining the drone war as something that will perpetuate and create problems for our country and our children instead of achieving the stated goal of keeping us safer.

Everyday the United States launches missiles into sovereign countries killing supposed evil terrorists hoping to do us harm, all done without oversight or limits.  If the idea of an American president ordering the deaths of these people as if he was the Sun King reincarnated is not loathsome enough, ponder this: we sit back and blithely ignore this extra-constitutional assassination program that kills the bad guys while scores of innocent people are killed as collateral damage, including children.  Think on that for a moment. You came home from work one day to find your neighbor's house obliterated and your own along with it, taking the lives of your children.  Come to find out your neighbor was a really bad man, possibly planning to do very bad things in another country, so that country blew up his house to ensure it did not happen.  Your world is shattered and your children dead because you had a bad neighbor, no other reason, how do you feel at that moment?  You are filled with rage, you now want to see that country destroyed, that country has made a very real enemy, one that is justified and righteous in his hatred.  Our foreign policy makes enemies like this everyday, and has been doing so for years.  It is not unpatriotic or disloyal to question whether or not our actions are keeping us safe or are actually starting to have the opposite effect.  Place yourself in the shoes of that man who comes home to that tragedy for just one moment;  what is your reaction to that horror?  Now ask yourself if killing that one bad guy, who given unlimited time, resources and luck MAY someday inflict some damage on the United States, was that worth staining the honor of the concept of America as a force for good that our children will have to carry?  If a Jihadi from Mali blew up an American school killing a dozen children there are people in this country who would advocate invasion and occupation as a response, and would feel righteous in their cause.  If the U.S. destroys a Malian school during a drone strike against a dangerous Jihadi, what should the world think of us?  I am not a peacenik, but I am tired of war.  A foreign policy that creates as many (if not a factorial more) enemies as it dispatches is utterly insane, and it ensures this cycle will continue on for decades.

Obama and Romney will continue this war and no one can deny that, and this is just one of a hundred issues that the two party system will not and can not address.  I support Gary Johnson because this is one of the many issues he understands ends up dragging our country further down rather than making it better and safer.  The video below perfectly encapsulates that and many other issues, and if nothing else you should try and pass it around to your friends and see if it starts to chip away at the idea that we must reside in this two party system.  If you believe that your individual action can not change the status quo, then you have ensured that the status quo will never change.